GPs Worry About Patients Missing Appointments, Low Medicine Stocks As Fuel Prices Soar

Kate
Green , Health Correspondent

GPs are
concerned about patients missing appointments and medicine
stocks running low, as fuel prices continue to
soar.

The war in Iran is affecting
supply chains worldwide, and recent reports claim the UK
is “weeks away” from medication shortages, according to a
report in The Guardian.

Luke Bradford from the
Royal NZ College of GPs said shortages were “the biggest
nuisance”, and doctors often received little notice a
medication was going to be unavailable.

It meant
affected patients needed to be prescribed an alternative
where possible.

Pharmac said it was closely
monitoring supply risks associated with the
crisis.

The impact of travel costs was mostly
affecting patients, he said, rather than the doctors
themselves.

“Of course, petrol has gone up massively,
but I don’t think there are genuinely GPs who think they
can’t drive to work through the cost of petrol.”

Dr Jo
Scott-Jones, a rural GP in Ōpōtiki and Tokoroa and
clinical director for the Pinnacle Midlands Health Network,
said already some rural patients were reluctant to make the
trip to the GP or specialist appointments at
hospitals.

“I think people really try and prioritise
those things, but I have no doubt that that is happening,”
he said.

He said virtual consultations became
commonplace during Covid, and he would like to see hospitals
gear up to provide virtual outreach into the community
now.

While there would be times when the specialist
needed to examine a patient in-person, he said, follow-up
appointments for many conditions, including post-operative
follow-ups, could “very easily be done via
telehealth”.

If these appointments were held within a
general practice, a nurse could sit alongside the patient to
assist with practical checks like blood pressure, he
said.

“We would have a session a week … offering a
virtual out-patient service for the hospital, and they could
timetable patients to come into the surgery in Ōpōtiki,
rather than making the trip to Whakatane or Tauranga,” he
said.

It would mean shifting some of the burden of
care from the hospital to the GP, “and obviously that needs
to come with some resources”.

The government announced
last month almost 150,000 families would receive an extra
$50 a week to help with petrol costs, and on Thursday,
announced it was temporarily increasing
the mileage rate for home and community support workers
by 30
percent.

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